New “FiberHouse” in Kansas City invites startups for a year, rent-free

This is the new "FiberHouse," at 4437 Cambridge St. in Kansas City, Kansas.

The Kansas City Startup Village (KCSV) is aglow with the announcement that Brad Feld, an early-stage investor, has closed on a house in Kansas City, Kansas (KCK) that he’s already dubbed the “FiberHouse.” Feld is also a co-founder of TechStars, a well-known startup accelerator based in Boulder, Colorado.

“I’m not going to be living in it,” he wrote on his blog on Wednesday. “Instead, I’m going to let entrepreneurs live / work in it. Rent free. As part of helping create the Kansas City startup community. And to learn about the dynamics of Google Fiber. And to have some fun.”

Feld is partnering with the local Kauffman Foundation, which has been instrumental in hosting and incubating related startup events, to create a competition for new entrepreneurs in the space. The contest begins Wednesday and will end on March 22, 2013.

“Applicants must be at least 18 years old. Up to five winners will be selected from among the applications received,” the Foundation wrote on its site. “The panel of judges—Feld, Scott Case of Startup America Partnership, David Cohen of TechStars, and Lesa Mitchell of the Kauffman Foundation—will judge the applicants based upon the innovative potential of their startups and their companies' ability to leverage Google Fiber.”

“Unbelievable energy”

As Ars reported in December 2012, Hanover Heights, KCK was the first part of the city to get Google Fiber. As a result, a small startup community—the Kansas City Startup Village—began to cluster within a several-block radius.

While none so far have reached massive success, the companies are very excited that Feld could bring some startup-style celebrity to the region.

“It's huge because it validates what we're doing in the KCSV,” wrote Ben Barreth, the mastermind behind his “Homes for Hackers.” The initiative places a small handful of startup hopefuls, rent-free, in a house in the area as a way to encourage the local tech community.

Feld’s new property is at 4437 Cambridge St., a five-minute walk around the block from the first Hacker House (currently housing three entrepreneurs). Barreth has also opened up one of the rooms on Airbnb, making it available to “fiber tourists.”

The KC Web developer floated the idea of pairing local families with spare rooms with budding entrepreneurs back in August 2012—a concept that later turned into the first “Hacker House” that Barreth bought for $48,000.

Others in the KCSV community have expressed their excitement with Feld investing in the property.

“All I have to say is that this startup community is on fire right now!” wrote Adam Arredondo, in an e-mail to Ars. He’s the CEO and co-founder of LocalRuckus, a startup based in the KCSV.

“[There’s] unbelievable energy. Rapidly growing collaboration across startup, corporate and government organizations on all levels. We have seen a drastic shift in the openness and mindset in Kansas City over the last couple of months. The sky is the limit for where this could go!”

Observers of the KCSV and Google Fiber have previously noted the fiber itself is an effective lure for entrepreneurs and developers. But it remains to be seen if the fiber alone, particularly as it expands throughout the KCK area and neighboring Kansas City, Missouri regions (and beyond?), can sustain a thriving, profitable startup community.

“Google Fiber itself brought attention to Kansas City and brings lots of visitors,” Lesa Mitchell, a vice president at Kauffman, told Ars. “Last week I met an entrepreneur from China who requires serious bandwidth for his company and came to town to see if he should locate his US presence here. That would not have happened so easily without Google Fiber.”

“Last week I met an entrepreneur from China that requires serious bandwidth for his company and came to town to see if he should locate his US presence here. That would not have happened so easily without Google Fiber.”

I guess the multi gigabit connections you can get at datacenters like Equinix just don't compare to 1Gb Google fiber connections. Not to mention all the peering one can do there.

I guess the multi gigabit connections you can get at datacenters like Equinix just don't compare to 1Gb Google fiber connections. Not to mention all the peering one can do there.

They probably don't compare against $70/month for Google fiber. You would imagine if the person from China came all the way to Kansas City, he would have some idea what his requirements might be. All he has to do is leverage Google Fiber and incorporate in Delaware for their tax free status and he's good to go.

Don't get me wrong - I would much rather have my servers hosted in a Tier 4 datacenter with peering to multiple providers and multi-gigabit connections, but that ain't cheap and the person from China would be taking a (hopefully) calculated risk if he pursues that path.

I would definitely be interested in seeing what policies Google might have/create in light of possible large-scale high-bandwidth utilization by for-profit entities. I need to look around for a whitepaper that notes what sort of backbone Google is using and what it might max out at.

“Last week I met an entrepreneur from China that requires serious bandwidth for his company and came to town to see if he should locate his US presence here. That would not have happened so easily without Google Fiber.”

I guess the multi gigabit connections you can get at datacenters like Equinix just don't compare to 1Gb Google fiber connections. Not to mention all the peering one can do there.

dt

I'm wondering the same thing, as a I remote desktop into amazon to do a system update.. what is it that I can't do? certainly I'm not going to be generating any more content than what I can upload to the server from this DSL connection or at even download to it from it's "10G" connect.

I don't really understand why Google Fiber is such a big draw. OK, you have a fast Internet connection. That's nice, but it's hardly unique, nor does it make you more productive beyond a certain point.

I have a Gbit connection to the web from here at work. Yeah, I can download my ISOs and do my Linux updates really fast, but those operations are a tiny fraction of my time. And at home, I can pull them down at 2.5MB/sec for less than $60/mo. Is getting them at 10-15MB/sec worth relocating for when those operations represent less than 3% of your time? OK, I'm saving 5-10 minutes once a month. Hooray? But I do those operations in the background while I'm working on other things anyway.

Similarly, a lot of these startups are undoubtedly going to do their computing with services like AWS, which has an even fatter pipe than Google Fiber can provide, which means the real bandwidth-heavy stuff, isn't coming from "the office"--it's coming from the cloud. In this case, it's nice to have low latency to your remote resources, but I have that already. Absolute throughput isn't so useful. Most humans can't detect latencies of less than 30ms, so what's the value of dropping from 18-20ms down to 8-10ms?

It's cool novelty, I guess, but I just don't see why you would relocate to have it. The real business value of a fast Internet connection diminishes quickly past a certain throughput/user. And if you're planning your business around cheap, fast broadband, I question your business sense, because you're micro-optimizing the wrong things instead of building your business. And you're not going to run the next Netflix or YouTube out of your closet, because it's strictly forbidden in the ToS.

(Yes, free rent might be a draw, but you've still got to relocate which has significant costs, both direct costs and opportunity costs.)

The way the media is acting about Google Fiber one would get the impression that the rest of the country is still on dial-up and not relatively speaking rather literally everyone else is on dial-up.

Why the hell would you move to Kansas to setup your startup? Just so you can get Fiber to the home internet connection? Seriously what can you do with a Fiber connection that you can't with a DSL or Cable? Are they running a 1000 seat call center? Do they have racks and rack of Web servers? Are they running the next Megaupload from their 4-disk Synology NAS in the cupboard?

Most startups use Amazon or Rackspace or Azure cloud hosting anyway? If I was just coding with a bunch of other people I don't think I would jizz in my pants for Google Fiber.

Besides the women in Silicon Valley (and California in general) are more beautiful anyway :-)

Maybe I am just short sighted, but I just don't get how fiber is going to make this huge difference to a startup. I could see where fiber would help if you wanted to do what Netflix is already doing, but it's going to take a lot more than a fat pipe and 2BR/1BA house to compete with them. I just don't get it.

but where else can one get a crazy fast connection *to* their server and have it for their personal use afterwards? *and* are located in a city known for entrepreneurship *and* get free rent for a year?

Fiber connections are great. The House in the picture looks great. The infrastructure around it looks like it's ready to fall apart. The thing that gets me is that once the startup becomes successful, they'll move out to better digs and KC itself is left with nothing.

but where else can one get a crazy fast connection *to* their server and have it for their personal use afterwards? *and* are located in a city known for entrepreneurship *and* get free rent for a year?

So all it would take to ruin your business is to have Google say you're in violation of the ToS by running a server on your consumer connection and kill your connection.

but where else can one get a crazy fast connection *to* their server and have it for their personal use afterwards? *and* are located in a city known for entrepreneurship *and* get free rent for a year?

So we've eliminated the incorrect bits, and are left with:

* Fast Internet connection* No rent

Since fast internet is available in most metro areas, that's not a unique value proposition. So that leaves free rent.

@DoubleTap & hanserI think both of you read his post incorrectly. His point was while you can get good bandwidth for your server at a coloc or with a cloud provider, anywhere, you still need to be able to get data on and off the server quickly, so having a fast connection from the office *to* your server is valuable. I won't weigh in on the merit of that argument, just trying to keep everyone on the same page.

@DoubleTap & hanserI think both of you read his post incorrectly. His point was while you can get good bandwidth for your server at a coloc or with a cloud provider, anywhere, you still need to be able to get data on and off the server quickly, so having a fast connection from the office *to* your server is valuable.

I don't care if it makes any sense to move to KC just for Google Fiber.. but if the interest peaks the interest of legislators in my area and gets them thinking if we had cheap fiber, we could get similar pub/interest/investment and then they lobby and pass either a muni-fiber or get Google into my neighborhood then I'm all for stories like this (I live between a large State universities main and satellite campus, they could just branch out that connection they have to the neighborhoods between.. pretty please..).. I should probably forward these kinds of stories onto my local representatives..

as for the free rent.. what if you're trying to run a start-up from family/friends couch/spareroom? cooler to move to KC for that free rent and be around a growing incubation center of sorts, possibly? (I don't know, just trying to find a possible answer)

The biggest advantage of a startup community is the community itself. Super-fast internet connections are handy and cool, but they're really the seed which attracts developers, after which the community develops its own momentum.

But anything which highlights the balkanization of internet provision, heavily laced with municipal exclusivity contracts (thoughtlessly written in perpetuity, rather than for the payback duration), is fine with me. For instance, we don't have FiOS in Cambridge MA - you know, MIT, Harvard, Akamai, Genzyme.... Go figure.

@DoubleTap & hanserI think both of you read his post incorrectly. His point was while you can get good bandwidth for your server at a coloc or with a cloud provider, anywhere, you still need to be able to get data on and off the server quickly, so having a fast connection from the office *to* your server is valuable.

If that's true, it's a crappy argument.

not if you're uploading massive graphics files. think of a company who sells CAD files (I assume one exists somewhere) would be sending back and forth from their PC

Is that figure correct ? Can you really buy a place in Kansas for less than a year's salary ?!?

This area is basically all slums. It is on the border or great properties and absolute garbage properties. I still find it funny Google fiber was rolled out in the worst ghetto Kansas city has to offer. The main road in this area is literally pawn shop ~ used car dealer ~ liquor store ~ Repeat.

Is that figure correct ? Can you really buy a place in Kansas for less than a year's salary ?!?

This area is basically all slums. It is on the border or great properties and absolute garbage properties. I still find it funny Google fiber was rolled out in the worst ghetto Kansas city has to offer. The main road in this area is literally pawn shop ~ used car dealer ~ liquor store ~ Repeat.

Is that figure correct ? Can you really buy a place in Kansas for less than a year's salary ?!?

This area is basically all slums. It is on the border or great properties and absolute garbage properties. I still find it funny Google fiber was rolled out in the worst ghetto Kansas city has to offer. The main road in this area is literally pawn shop ~ used car dealer ~ liquor store ~ Repeat.

this is more than a small lie.

it's so much a lie that I don't even know how to respond.

Please do explain. This area is so awesome that every time I drive through on a weekend night they have the police squad van loading people up by the dozens. Every friend I know in this area has been burglarized in their homes or cars. This is like the armpit of the greater KC area.

Please do explain. This area is so awesome that every time I drive through on a weekend night they have the police squad van loading people up by the dozens. Every friend I know in this area has been burglarized in their homes or cars. This is like the armpit of the greater KC area.

Not that I live there, but a quick look in google maps completely disagrees with your characterization of the area. Also why would burglars rob slum houses instead of better neighbourhoods? Doesn't really add up..